Once in Royal David’s City

Growing up in the Anglican tradition, I came to know the carol “Once in Royal David’s City” as the carol that kicked off a Lessons and Carols service. A child always sang the first verse and then the congregation joined in on the second verse. I didn’t realize until later in my life that the carol was actually written as a poem for children by Cecil Alexander but had made its way into the broader hymn repertoire of the church.

In my first few years leading contemporary services of lessons and carols I always avoided this carol because I wasn’t sure it would work in that context. A few years ago I started to use it and was glad I did. I ended up writing a new verse (verse 4) to get into a bit more detail about why Jesus came.

We recently recorded my arrangement of this carol as the opening track on our Advent EP, “For Our Salvation“, with full band, a string section (orchestrated and produced by my friend Joshua Spacht), and children’s choir conducted by my sister-in-law, Caroline Crocker.

I wanted to offer it as a free download in case you’d like to try it with your congregation.

You can listen to it here: 

Click here for the chord chart.
Click here for the free mp3.
And here’s the lyric video.

What Christmas Reveals

1You can learn a lot about a church’s theology of worship by watching what it does at Christmas time.

If, at center stage, you have the manger, and the Savior who condescended to become sin for us, you can deduce that this church believes that the point of worship is to exalt Christ.

But if, at center stage, you have sentimentality, and all the warm traditions, then you can deduce that this church believes that the point of worship is to be sentimental.

You can have pageants and concerts and Christmas tree lightings that are designed to present the Gospel and exalt Christ, and you can have pageants and concert and Christmas tree lightings that are designed to evoke that “sentimental feeling”. The issue is not what medium the church chooses, but rather what message the church preaches.

What Christmas reveals in churches is what (and whom) they choose to exalt when they sing, or when they have a concert, or when they have an elaborate pageant with real-life donkeys and sheep. And the primary choice for churches and the worship leaders who serve them is whether, at this holiday season, to center themselves and their events and their songs around a manger or around a snow globe.

A manger is dirty. It makes us uncomfortable. It forces us to see that God came down as far as he could, into the smelliness and dirtiness of this world because we couldn’t rescue ourselves from that lowly place even if we tried. And boy do we try.

A snow globe is pretty. It makes you feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. But after you shake it around for a few minutes, it gets old and loses its novelty. The fake snow hits the ground and you put it back on the shelf until next year when you repeat the same fleeting cycle again.

What Christmas reveals is whether or not your church invites people to look upon a Savior, or look upon a show. The show will last for 2 hours. The Savior will change their life.

Three Things To Aim For In Advent

1This coming Sunday, December 1st, is the first Sunday of Advent. Liturgically, it’s the beginning of the new church year. Practically, it’s the countdown to Christmas. It’s a season of waiting, expectation, anticipation, and heightened awareness that a special day is on the horizon.

Some churches make a big deal of Advent and some churches skip over the whole thing and just start singing Christmas carols before people have even had a chance to finish their left-over Turkey. I’d like to make a case, in whatever church/denominational/liturgical setting you lead, that you try to aim for at least three things as you lead in Advent.

Build anticipation
The countdown to Christmas taps into a longing in people’s hearts that they might not even be aware is there. The presenting longing is for a fun party, or for some days off, or for time with family, or opening presents, but the underlying longing in all of us is to be rescued. We all want a Savior. If you think I’m crazy just watch people’s faces at political rallies. It’s nuts.

At this time of year, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the weeks the Church has called “Advent” (for “arriving” or “coming”) for centuries, we’re crazy if we ignore the anticipation that everyone is experiencing, and attempt to skip over it and jump to Christmas too soon.

Wait until the last Sunday before Christmas, or even Christmas Eve, to sing Christmas songs. Sing Advent hymns, not Christmas carols. Light the Advent candles. Pray Advent prayers. Let the prophesies of the coming of Christ be read in your services. Don’t decorate your Sanctuary too soon. Intentionally hold off on bringing Christmas into things too early in the season. Build anticipation, even to the point of making people ask you why you’re waiting so long.

The point is to tap into people’s anticipation, and to remind them that the underlying longing is for a Savior. It will make Christmas (and Christmas carols) all the more sweet when you finally get there.

Express lament
A few nights ago I read a tragic story in The Washington Post about a murder/suicide about an hour’s drive from my house that claimed the life of a young mother and her infant while the 5-year-old daughter took a bath upstairs. She didn’t know anything was wrong until her Mom didn’t come to get her out of the bath, at which point she got herself dressed and then made the terrible discovery downstairs.

This kind of story makes me unspeakably sad. And angry. And confronted by the evil, sinful, brokenness that has infected this world. And I don’t know what else to pray besides “Jesus, please come back quickly.”

We all read news stories like that, or hear of yet another case of incurable cancer, or read of more threats of war, or see the villages in the Philippines completely wiped off the map in the latest typhoon, and deep inside of us we know it’s not the way it’s supposed to be.

Advent is a time when we can (and should) sing songs and pray prayers of lament, crying out to Jesus to come back, and to come back soon, and to “make the sad things come untrue”. If we skip past Advent without giving our people an opportunity to express these cries, we do them a disservice.

Let your people lament. And lament in hope. Because one day Jesus came as a baby and he’ll one day come again as King.

Give people space to be still
Christmas parties, travel, buying presents, wrapping presents, buying a tree, decorating the house, having a good time, baking cookies, hanging lights outside your house, raking leaves, keeping everyone happy, sweeping up broken ornaments, watering the tree, sending out Christmas cards, getting a family picture taken, baking the pie, trying not to gain 20 pounds, and oh that’s right try to make it to church too.

The weeks leading up to Christmas are the most insane weeks of the people in your congregation’s whole year. We all feel it. I’m feeling it this year especially as Catherine and I prepare to welcome baby girl # 3 on December 18th! And release two new albums (great Christmas present idea!), and manage the Andrew Peterson concert two days after our new baby comes, and the list goes on. All of us have our own long lists this time of year.

Wouldn’t it be a great gift to our people on Sunday mornings if we gave them some space to be still? Between songs. During a song. Between readings. After the message. During communion. Whenever.

Find some time in your services to intentionally leave some space for people to be still. Even just 30 seconds can be powerful. Just say something like: “This morning we’re aware that all of us are experiencing the usual pre-Christmas busyness and pressure and anxiety. We’re just going to take a few moments to pause, and be still, and enjoy God’s presence, and before we sing this next song let’s allow the Holy Spirit to help us to slow down. To rest. To remember our need for a Savior…” Something like that. It will bless people.

So whether you’re in a really liturgical church or a really informal church, I’d encourage you to use the season of Advent to help your congregation anticipate the coming of Christ and the coming of Christmas, to lament all the brokenness and sadness that we long for him to redeem, and to see Sunday mornings as opportunities to rest in the grace and love of God that’s displayed in the cradle, on the cross, in the empty tomb, and on the occupied Throne.

For previous year’s thoughts on Advent:
1. What to Do with Advent – Pt. 1
2. What to Do with Advent – Pt. 2
3. What Songs Work Well For Advent?
4. Two More Advent Song Ideas
5. A Contemporary Service of Lessons Carols

Keep Trucking

1Yesterday morning at our 11:00am service we were halfway through our opening block of songs when I heard a crazy noise coming out of the speakers that seemed to make the whole room jump. No, it wasn’t my drummer deciding to let loose. It was the sound board deciding to go nuts for a second. Before deciding to do it again. At which point the engineer made the decision to mute everything. And restart the board.

So for 45 seconds yesterday we were smack dab in the middle of a song and the sound system was pretty much completely off. The interesting thing was that the band had no idea that the system was totally off for 45 seconds because our in-ear monitors were working just fine. (Chalk this one up as one major reason why in-ears might detrimentally effect your worship leading: because you can’t hear what they hear).

But I knew something had happened. I had heard the crazy noise and I had seen the people jump, and then I noticed that they seemed more reserved for the rest of the set. It would have been nice to know that they weren’t really hearing anything, but since I was blissfully unaware, I kept on trucking.

And the congregation kept trucking too. They were dealing with an enormous distraction, so of course they pulled back a bit, but they kept on singing. The projector hadn’t shut down, so the lyrics were still up. And they knew the song. And the band was playing and singing. So, slowly the sound system came back on, and slowly the engineer started fading up the channels hoping that the board would cooperate. And when I sat down I found out what had happened.

What did I learn?

1. In-ear monitors are great, but they really do cut you off from the congregation.
2. Unless there’s some sort of emergency, or a total loss of power, it’s better to keep on trucking than screech everything to a halt.
3. This kind of thing is humbling. It reminds you that you can’t control everything.
4. When the sound system dies, it’s probably best to keep people singing. If I had tried to stop the song and say something, it would have been hard for them to hear what I was saying. Plus, what would I have said?
5. Congregations look for cues from the people on stage. If you keep your cool, then they will too.

Don’t Be Financially Reckless

1This morning I spent two hours working on something really exciting.

Receipts. Requests for reimbursements. Check requests for different people/things. Getting these various requests approved. Figuring out mileage reimbursement and printing out a Google Map to account for the miles.

Actually, it wasn’t exciting at all. And for a guy who left his final math class in college and literally put his hand on the wall when he walked out and begged God to give him a C (I got it), it’s not my cup of tea.

But if you’re in ministry and you’re financially reckless, it could end up ruining you. Maybe not at first, and maybe not in a dramatic fashion, but it could happen eventually.

If you’re financially reckless and don’t keep track of receipts or consistently go over budget or break policies, the first thing that will happen will be that your church leadership will see that you’re immature and untrustworthy. If you can’t be trusted with simple things like coding a receipt or making sure you don’t spend twice as much on supplies than is budgeted, then how you can be trusted to lead a ministry?

The second thing that will happen will be the people who oversee the finances at your church will permanently red-flag you. You might be at a church that preaches and sings the Gospel of Grace until they’re blue in the face, but if they’re smart, their finances are overseen by strict, grace-less, rule-following, rule-setting, policy-wonky Keepers Of The Law (let’s call them K.O.T.L. for short). You don’t want to get on the K.O.T.L.’s bad side. It could make life very uncomfortable for you. If you respect their rules and do your part to honor their necessary standards for financial integrity, then they’ll be your friends. And you need friends.

The last thing that will happen if you’re financially reckless in ministry is that you’ll make a huge mistake some day, or you’ll make a series of small mistakes that equal a huge mistake, and because you’ve not been careful, you’ve gotten sloppy and you’ve all of the sudden given your detractors the ammunition they need to get you pushed aside. If you think this kind of thing isn’t possible in ministry, then you’re in for a surprise. It’s entirely possible, and it happens all the time. The ministry battle field is dotted with defeated youth pastors, worship leaders, senior pastors, and sound engineers who made one too many financial errors and it finally came back to bite them.

Keep your receipts. Stay in (or under) budget. Follow the policies. Email the finance people when you have a big expense coming up, or when you make a mistake (like the time I was accidentally logged in to my work iTunes account and I bought an Elmo app for my 4-year old). Play by the financial rules and you’ll get to stay on the field for a long time in relative peace.